Since the earliest times the Mediterranean area has been
crossed by pilgrims traveling to sanctuaries, sacred
places, and looking for new opportunities and new markets
for trade. Nowadays, as in earlier times, this pilgrimage
goes on, but it involves prevalently the people living in
the South of the Mediterranean who are bound for the new
sanctuaries of globalization: large European cities.
These pilgrims, like their predecessors, bear hopes for a
better future that is often impossible or difficult to
realize in their homeland, because of economic problems
and sometimes fratricide wars. Music accompanied the
journey of ancient pilgrims towards the sanctuaries.

An
audiocassette of Chaba Kheira

Today it accompanies immigrants
during their hard journey towards new hope. The
immigrants may not have much in their backpacks,
but audiocassettes of music from their homeland
often make up an unforgettable part of
their precious belongings.

Music seems
to represent a strong symbolic bond between
immigrants and their homeland, and has always
followed immigration, at times characterizing it
like a soundtrack (Gilroy 1997: 300-348). Thus,
music is an identity tool, an emotive contact
with the homeland, a symbol of a possible return.
Moreover, as I am suggesting in this article that
music can be used to express the new identities
produced by immigration itself.. Emigration from
Maghreb towards France and its capital Paris is
one of the most important and continuous
emigration flows which have crossed the
Mediterranean. Many Algerians - from the time of
colonization up to today - have reached the land
of liberté, fraternité, égalité more
or less voluntarily (Liauzu 1996).

They were forced to take part in French
history, French economy, and also in Frances wars.
Some Maghrebi quarters were developed in Paris. The most
famous was and still is Barbés (18éme
arrondissmenent)

Barbès

This immigration - sometimes during wartime it was
referred to as deportation - involved predominantly men
who worked in factories. Many Algerians remained in Paris
in spite of the retaliations of the French against
Algerian immigrants and the massacres of Algerian
protesters during the Algerian Liberation War (Liauzu
1996: 126) - such as in October 1961 when many protesters
were murdered and thrown into the Seine.

In 1975 the French government changed the immigration
law and authorized the families of Algerian immigrants to
join them in France. Therefore "Les Maghrébins
représentent en 1982 38,5% de la population étrangère,
mais cest moins désormais lentrée de
travailleurs que le regroupement familial qui joue,
limmigration de main-duvre a tendu à
devenir une immigration de peuplement" (Liauzu 1996:
122). The families brought their children, and more
children were born in France, producing a second
generation. French people call this young generation 'jeunes
issus de limmigration' or beurs. Beurs
have a different identity both from Algerian immigrants
and from French people of their age group.

Algerian immigrants experience two different aspects
of displacement: being up-rooted from their homeland and
adapting to a foreign culture; on the other hand, their
children - who were born and study in France - experience
a displacement of identity. Beurs are suspended
between the parents' background and the everyday life of
French society. Therefore, I have chosen the word
'suspended' since often they are not accepted either into
Algerian or French society.

In France beurs are seen as immigrants, even if
they have often a French education and nationality
(Khellil 1991: 88-105). On the contrary, in Algeria they
are seen as French or, if worse come to worse, as
'traitors' to Algerian culture. The beurs
experiences (in particular for girls) of going back to
Algeria - for instance, during the holidays with their
parents - are sometimes really traumatic. For example, beur
boys are often called by offensive names, such as
'lémigré', but the beur girls are referred
to as amjah (lost) and merula (a woman of
loose morals). During my fieldwork some beurs told
me about these problems stating "in Algeria Im
seen as an immigrant, a foreigner." We may suppose
that a lot of the resentment experienced by visiting beurs
is probably fuelled by jealousy, as very many Algerians
cannot leave the country and face long-term unemployment
at home.

Great differences in cultural
identity and social position separate beurs
from their parents, relatives and other first
generation immigrants. For this reason they have
coined the new word beur as a linguistic
border between themselves and immigrants, between
their cultural background and that of French
people. The social position of these youth in
French society is not easy. They often live in
the citys boundaries (the banlieue)
not only in the physical sense but also in a
social one. In this way, some beurs choose
a life of crime, do not attend the school and
often have clashes with the police. The mass
media have given the beurs a bad image,
suggesting that they are one of the principal
problems in French cities (in particular in
Paris).
In 1983 beurs expressed their problems
through demonstrations organized by some
anti-racism associations, the most important of
which was SOS Racism (Jazoulu 1986; Amara 1991).

Logo
SOS racisme

These demonstrations and marches
emphasized for the first time the problems of beurs
more than the beur-problem. There were important
discussions in French society (which even now are still
relevant) about its relationship with the beurs and
their status in France (Khellil 1991; la Coste-Durjardin
1992; Bachmann 1992). French politicians and the
government followed these discussions with interest.
Different theories were proposed, the most important
among them being the 'assimilation policy' and
'integration policy' (Khellil 1991: 37-60; Manço 1999:
31-95). It may be useful to take a brief look at
both.

The principal characteristic of assimilation is the
up-rooting of cultural differences resulting in the
disappearance of many aspects belonging to the culture of
origin. The dominant culture is recognized as
all-important. Assimilation is a colonialist concept and
until 1960 was the model for immigration laws in France.
Due to harsh criticism the assimilation concept was
replaced with integration. Integration is founded upon
five fundamental concepts: equality of rights; the fight
against discrimination; compensation for inequalities;
participation in political and social life; the right to
French citizenship. In spite of all that, Jacqueline
Costa-Lascoux (1999) highlights that integration can be
interpreted as a 'softer' type of assimilation.

It may seem that these questions are of interest only
to sociologists or politicians, but also beurs and
immigrantshavetheir points of view (cf.
Charlot 1981). In this article I'll try to show that beurs
criticize both those who consider them as immigrants as
well as the supporters of assimilation and integration
policies. In most cases the beurs express their
refusal of assimilation or integration through two
different types of behavior: on the one hand, they come
into conflict with society (including criminal acts); on
the other hand, they use art, music, and theater as
socially acceptable tools of confrontation.

Since beurs see themselves as French citizens,
every special policy aimed at their
assimilation/integration is perceived as a racist
attitude against them, an exclusion from French society
with the aim of constructing a sort of ' Indian
reservation ' for them within French society. But it
should be added that beurs have a profoundly
different vision of French culture in comparison with
most French people. During my fieldwork someone told me:
"I dont have to eat pork and drink alcohol in
order to be a French citizen. Praying five times per day
and speaking Arabic doesn't prevent me from being French
citizen." Despite their sense of belonging to French
society, the youth define themselves as French-beurs,
where the word beur wants to be a symbol of a
specific cultural identity: the beur-culture
(Fahdel 1990: 140-152; Khellil 1991: 71-85; Reynaert
1993: 18).

In order to understand the complex reality of the
Algerian immigration in France (2),
it is important to take into consideration another point.
We have seen above that there are some relational
problems on the one hand between beurs and French
society and on the other hand between beurs and
Algerian society, but there are also some differences
between beurs and immigrants. In particular,
different attitudes to the so-called 'myth of return'
(Khellil 1991: 21-38; La Coste-Dujardin 1992: 7-103)
should be mentioned .

The immigrants dream of returning permanently to their
native country, but the day of this return is postponed
time after time. An immigrant expresses this will both
before the departure from his homeland and during his
whole life abroad but often he never goes back. The topic
of return is common in conversations with friends and
relatives. Sometimes even a date is fixed but generally
it is not respected. Indeed, home-coming often remains
only a myth.

The 'myth of return' is an immigrants
distinctive peculiarity. On the contrary, with the word
'return' the beurs refer to France and not Algeria
as their destination. This is absolutely clear in the
words of most beur-girls, who live in dread of
'returning' to Algeria because they are worried about the
possibility of being married to an Algerian man. For
them, the 'myth of a return' is transformed into a
'nightmare of return' (La Coste-Dujardin 1992: 100).